National Science Foundation News

When an accomplished faculty member takes a new position with another institution, it typically isn’t cause for celebration. However, when that institution is the National Science Foundation and the professor can continue working with their school—as is the case with UT’s Lynne Parker—it is a double bonus for the university.

The National Science Foundation area of the USA Science and Engineering Festival will have a UT feel thanks to a spot in the prestigious event going to CURENT, the Center for Ultra-Wide-Area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks. Housed in the Min H. Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building in UT’s College of Engineering, CURENT is a UT-led multi-institution research group focused on making the electrical grid more efficient, particularly in the area of energy transportation.

Tennessee high school students Dalton Chaffee and Hayes Griffin have now done what many scientists strive for: publishing their research in a top science journal. Chaffee and Griffin worked with mentor R. Tucker Gilman, a former postdoctoral research fellow at UT’s National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) to study mate choice. Their work was published this week in the journal Evolution.

A National Science Foundation communications workshop designed to improve the public communications skills of researchers will be held at the UT Conference Center on Wednesday and Thursday, November 7 and 8. Science: Becoming the Messenger is designed to help university researchers at all experience and education levels communicate effectively with the public.

Jon Camden, a UT assistant professor of analytical chemistry has received a National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his work in surface nonlinear spectroscopy.

Three UT Knoxville faculty members have received substantial support from the National Science Foundation to pursue early-career research projects. Chemist Jon Philip Camden, physicist Norman Mannella, and aeronautic engineer Kivanc Ekici have received NSF CAREER awards, the foundation’s most prestigious award for junior faculty.

Egypt is now linked into a high-speed internet housed at UT Knoxville that allows scientists, students, and educators worldwide to collaborate to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Slowed by the country’s revolution, it took more than two years to complete the link, which is part of the Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development, or GLORIAD—a fiber-optic science network that circles the world.

Nine alumni and graduate students from UT Knoxville are recipients of the 2010 National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship. The NSF awards are given to students based on their potential as young scientists and for intellectual merit and broader impact. The fellowships are used to further their research.